The Fluidity Of TIme

• Emma Brodribb, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2017

“Are you alright?” Three words he said often enough for her to lose count if Liv had ever tried. Xavier sat beside her on the sand, close enough for their shoulders to brush. The shiver that ran up her spine jolted a response from her lips. “I’m fine.” Words he’d heard from her too often, and, more importantly, a lie.

The clouds above them whispered promises of a storm. “We should go inside,” Xavier murmured. “It’ll rain any moment now.”
“You go.” She stared straight ahead, not daring to look at Xavier, her friend, her something more. “I won’t be much longer.”
His sigh was a weighty thing. Still, he didn’t move.
“You know, it’s alright to be sad and not know why.” When Liv glanced over, she met his warm brown eyes. “Just tell me when you’re upset okay? I won’t ask why.”
“I know why I’m sad,” Liv told him. “I just don’t know how to explain.”
“That’s okay too.” He was so warm, so alive. If Liv stared long enough and hard enough at the rise and fall of his chest, and the flush of blood in his cheeks, she could almost forget how it felt to stare at his cold body hours after the life had fled from it.

“What do you think would happen to me if you left?” Liv asked Xavier, her fingers lacing through the cold sand. “What would I be?”
“I don’t know.” It was an honest answer if a brutal one. Their lives had been so intertwined for years that neither of them had been able to picture life without the other.
“I’m not sure how long I could survive it,” she whispered, almost unwillingly. When she closed her eyes tightly, she felt his fingers wrap around hers through the sand. “I’m not going anywhere, no matter what happens.” And God, how she wished that were true. Liv can’t think of anything to say, so she doesn’t.

There’s a rumble of thunder and she hears rain start to fall, but it never hits her skin. When Liv opens her eyes, instead of finding a beach there are only the four rooms of a bedroom. A bed, sheets still rumpled from the last time someone slept there months ago, and a discarded sketch pad by the pillow. Liv stands from the floor, running a hand along the cold sheets. Xavier’s sketch pad is still open to what he’d last been looking at. It’s a picture of her, hair tangled by the rain from a storm, the same storm she had almost been caught in moments ago. When she lifted the page, Liv found a blank page on the other side. That moment on the beach had been only three days before Xavier was in an accident and four before he died. He hadn’t had time to draw anything else, and she hadn’t had enough time to save him.

Not yet.